Damien Brenks
Damien Brenks is the main antagonist of Watch Dogs. Aiden's former partner, Damien Brenks blackmails him into discovering the truth about the Merlaut Job. Description Damien’s mind is restless. He’s easily distracted by new ideas, but when he does find focus, he’s precise. Self-absorbed bordering on narcissistic, it was a horrendous blow to his psyche when he was left beaten near-death. Damien plays the world around him like a chess board: seeing many intricate moves ahead and manipulating his opponents from the opening moves. He’ll have his revenge, his own way. Events of Watch Dogs In the prologue, Aiden is at the Merlaut Hotel to tap into people's personal information so Damien could siphon money from them. Suddenly, they detected another hacker in the system. Though Aiden insisted that they cut the link, Damien refused so he could find out more, but his protégé refused to let his recklessness endanger them and was forced to terminate the link and make a run for it. However, the second hacker was able to discern their identities and a hit was put on them. Damien ended up crippled in the left leg while a failed assassination attempt on Aiden resulted in the death of his niece Lena. Eleven months later, Damien began making subtle attempts to contact Aiden, involving paying off a stranger to make a prank call to his sister Nicole to set her on edge. This led to Aiden chasing down the caller and attempted to trace who hired him. Eventually, Aiden found Damien's digital breadcrumbs and a message to meet. Upon coming face-to-face, Damien was drunk and started rambling on how he had suffered as much Aiden had. He then revealed that he had traced the IP address of the second hacker and insisted on working with Aiden. However, Aiden refused, and insisted that he didn't need him. Aiden later called Damien to find out what he knew, but the latter failed to show up at their new rendezvous. He then revealed himself on three large TV screens, revealing he was in Nicole's house. Aiden raced there and confronted Damien, who revealed he had taken Nicole captive and demanded that Aiden do what he wants in exchange for her safety. Aiden checked out the IP address and got a corrupted video of a woman. Eventually, Aiden managed to get a partial download from the location, Rossi-Fremont, discovering the woman's identity as Rose Washington, though the files were encrypted. Damien refused to release Nicole, as he wanted the data decrypted, forcing Aiden to seek the aid of Raymond "T-Bone" Kenney, which Damien advised against, knowing Kenny's reputation as a whistleblower, who would release the blackmail publicly and thus rendering it worthless. It was then that Aiden realized that Damien wanted the blackmail data Delford "Iraq" Wade (who turned out to be the third hacker at the Merlaut job) possessed. Damien later went to Blume Corporation's Pawnee office to tip off their HR director Charlotte Gardner to T-Bone's location, demanding access to CTOS in exchange for the blackmail data. Aiden, who was hacking into the network to erase T-Bone's biometrics, eavesdropped on the meeting and left to alert T-Bone. With T-Bone on his side, Aiden later assaulted Rossi-Fremont to retrieve the data. But just after informing Damien of his success, it was stolen by another hacker, JB "Defalt" Markowicz, forcing him to turn up to their meeting with nothing. Aiden tried backing Damien into a corner, pointing out that without the blackmail, Blume would most likely send fixers after him. Damien then allowed him another phone call with Nicole. However, believing his protégé was not taking him seriously, Damien had a fixer waiting in a WKZ TV truck broadcast images of Aiden's vigilantism on all the large TV screens, effectively blowing his cover. As Aiden runs for his life, Damien shows off his own CTOS hacks to interfere with Aiden's getaway. Aiden recovers the data from Defalt before rescuing Nicole and sending her out of the city with her son Jackson. He then discovered that it was the Chicago South Club's boss Dermot "Lucky" Quinn who ordered the hit and went to the Merlaut to confront him. After killing Quinn and obtaining blackmail footage of Mayor Donovan Rushmore murdering Rose Washington, which Quinn assumed was what Aiden and Damien were searching for in the first place, Damien calls Aiden, revealing that his former ally, Clara Lille, unaware that Nicole was already free, was willing to give herself up and Quinn's hitmen were going to kill her because she's a liability. Failing to save Clara, Aiden soon uploaded all of the blackmail Iraq had on the city to the general public, much to Damien's anger. He then revealed that he had gained control of CTOS, which he used to create havoc throughout the city, believing that everyone should suffer as he did. Aiden, with T-Bone's help, attempted to upload viruses into CTOS' weak points to start a blackout to find Damien's position. Damien attempted to interfere by initiating multiple CTOS scans that got Aiden pursued by the police. Once Aiden started the blackout, he traced Damien to the lighthouse. But upon confronting his old ally, Jordi Chin turned up to kill both Aiden and Damien, having taken a new contract. However, Aiden uses his phone to make the lighthouse's lamp explode, creating a distraction, in which he throws Jordi over the railing before shooting Damien in the head, killing him. Appearance Damien is a Caucasian man with blue eyes, short brown hair and a goatee. Throughout the entire game, Damien has the same appearance: a small grey hat, a dark blue jacket with a grey shirt and a black vest. Damien has black trousers and beige shoes. He also uses a brace on his left leg, following the attack by the Club's hitmen sent after the failure of the Merlaut Job. Abilities and skills Audio Logs Audio Log #1 "It's 3AM and I'm in the hospital. My legs are busted. One pretty bad. Doctor says it won't come back 100%. Apparently I've been here a week. I only remember the night they attacked. I barely reached my front door and these guys were on me. I figured to rob my house, but the police tell me they never entered the building. Just beat me unconscious and left. Cops asked if I had enemies. Where to begin. My guess is the Merlaut job. We rattled somebody's cage. What was that video I saw? Whatever it was, someone wants to keep it secret." Audio Log #2 "I saw my old partner in the paper this morning. 'The driver, Aiden Pearce, 38, lost control of his vehicle in the Pawnee underpass. His young niece, Lena Pearce was killed in the crash.' Poor girl. But Aiden doesn't lose control of vehicles. That was no accident. And the timing's interesting. Same week as my attack. Right after our job at the Merlaut. That's going to upset Aiden. He's a smart hacker, I taught him that. But he's a vengeful sonofabitch. You piss him off, he won't let you go. You kill his niece -- God rest your soul." Audio Log #3 "After months of physiotherapy, the verdict is in. Doctor says my leg will never recover. I'll need a brace for life. Eventually a wheelchair. Those bastards crippled me. They wanted to scare me away. Make me flee to Bermuda and start over. What could be so fucking precious, so secret and dangerous, that they would cripple a man because he glanced at it? They haven't scared me. They've lit a fire under me." Audio Log #4 "Aiden and I weren't the only people raiding the Merlaut Hotel that night. Someone else was snooping inside. But he wasn't after cash. He was after data. He knew precisely what he wanted. That video. How did he know it was there? I don't even know if he got it. He probably had to run once the alarms went off. If I can track him down, I might get some answers on who attacked me." Audio Log #5 "Well that was easy. I've found our secret hacker. My legs may be shot, but I haven't lost my touch at the keyboard. He's hiding inside Rossi-Fremont, some little ghetto corner of Chicago. Welfare, drugs -- they're revolting creatures you keep at arms length. One of these creatures snuck inside the Merlaut server. Maybe I'll find that video on his computer. Problem is I can't break in remotely. I need someone to go inside. Someone more street-savvy than me. Someone like me. Unfortunately, he won't work with me anymore. He's made that pretty clear." Audio Log #6 "I've been reading lots on Chicago's new vigilante. He seems to have popped out of nowhere. Most interesting, he arrived on the scene soon after Aiden's car crash. Isn't that curious? The two share a self-righteous anger. Could it really be him? Aiden's always been a dangerous fighter. I cleaned him up good and taught him how to breach a network. But he always had that hair trigger rage. You can never take the street punk out of a man like Aiden. I suppose being the vigilante gives him a safe outlet." Audio Log #7 "Well well, the police are in quite a frenzy. The vigilante's twisted their panties in a knot. If I were to psycho-analyze Aiden, I'd say he's projecting. He can't fix the death of his niece, so he's fixing all other injustices littering our streets. Maybe that helps scratch the itch, but it doesn't answer the question that must be nagging at him. Who killed his niece? One thing I've learned about Aiden -- he's got a rabid protective streak. Tinker with his family at your peril. I wonder. Maybe I can tempt him. Give him a way to avenge the little girl. And get what I want." Audio Log #8 "I've found something curious. Something called the Bellwether. I don't have a lot on it, but the name popped up during my review of the Merlaut job. Far as I can tell, it's some kind of code inside CTOS. The term bellwether basically means a harbinger of the future. What a puzzling name for some code inside a smart city. I know my programmers. They over-think everything. That name is deliberate. My curiosity has been piqued." Audio Log #9 "I haven't got all the pieces yet, but that corrupted video from the Merlaut -- somehow that's connected to this Bellwether code. There's an opportunity here. Something beyond simple vengeance. Something memorable. I'll need to be careful. If I involve Aiden, he can't know my motives. The man's reckless, self-centered, but he's got a curiously strong moral compass. It's a terrible weakness. Makes him hard to control. I just need to find a way into that code. See what they're doing inside ctOS, then cripple it all." Mission Appearances *Bottom of the Eighth (Prologue) * Thanks for the Tip *Hold On, Kiddo (Betrayal) *Collateral (Phone Call) *Role Model (Phone Call) *The Future is in Blume *For the Portfolio (Mentioned) * Someone's Knocking (Mentioned) *In Plain Sight *Little Sister (Phone Call) *Ghosts of the Past (Phone Call) *No Turning Back (Phone Call) *Sometimes You Still Lose (Killed) Gallery Watch Dogs Damien Brenks Profile.png Trivia *Damien has one son, Marcus, who is 15 years old. *Even if the player has Aiden shoot Damien in the leg or any area where someone could survive a gun shot easily, Damien will still die instantly as if he was shot in the head. *He is the narrator in the Digital Trip, Madness. * The only time you can profile him, in the mission "The Future is in Blume", it states he is divorced and his occupation is a Forensic Technologist. de:Damien Brenks ja:ダミアン・ブリンクス ru:Дэмиен Бренкс Category:Characters Category:Characters in Watch Dogs Category:Antagonists Category:Male Characters Category:Deceased Category:Main characters